Stan Walchuk has led an uncommon life and it led him to write an uncommon biography.
A lot of his personal narrative involves the wilds of mountain and forest exploration, but he is equally comfortable in the urban jungle. He is most comfortable, no matter what the terrain, with his butt in the saddle and he's pretty handy with a pen in his hand. He's written extensively over the years for Equine Magazine, The Canadian Horse Journal, Bowhunter Magazine and many others.
He was also the man behind the breathtaking horse trek immortalized in book and documentary form entitled Cordillera. It detailed the epic trip he took across North America, crossing 11 mountain ranges, more than 20 major rivers, and the breadth of the continent.
When that is only one of many life-altering, character-building moments between one human and the wildest parts of the planet, there is more than one book in the mental library. The man behind - and well ahead - of Cordillera is now back between two expository covers in the new book Common Man, Uncommon Life. It's a mountain of a volume, itself, at almost 700 pages of raw honesty and wild accounts through the eyes of the man who was there through it all and barely lived to tell all these tales.
"I admit, it was hard to talk about some things, like how hard my dad was on me, but I felt it was necessary to establish everything that was to come later in my life, who I was as a person, and why that made me the kind of guy who would go off alone for hundreds of miles into the bush," Walchuk said. "I was fiercely independent, too, for no reason other than just wanting to have my own way. I ran away from home at age 11. I went on my first solo wilderness trip before I was 13 years old."
The writing of a book is about as different an activity as can be imagined, from backcountry trekking through the nation's must rugged forests, valleys and mountains. Its one commonality is being alone for long periods of time. It took Walchuk three years of chipping away at the writing process.
"I've had ups and downs in life. Maybe more than some," he said, explaining how the writing process was an adventure of its own. "I said in the book that you had to face the ghosts and face yourself. I think I did that a lot anyway, just because I have spent a lot of time alone in the wilderness and you go through stages of thinking when you do that. Yes, the book was sometimes a healing process but sometimes not - there were things brought up that I haven't properly reconciled, or maybe not gotten to a point of closure or peace, and that's still there sitting on your mind. If you write a biography that is honest, it talks about things that didn't go well, things you're not proud of, and those things are sitting there staring at you. So it was both a catharsis and a little unsettling at the same time."
He admitted to feeling a little numb to the completion of the book. When an activity is a regular part of your day to day living for years on end, its abrupt ending can set the writer adrift. His mental muscles went into a state of dull denial that Common Man, Uncommon Life was now out of his hands.
"It becomes a strange feeling when you have to realize your life is now moving in a new direction and a regular routine is not there anymore. But it is also a relief to take a break. But if you're like me, you're off to the next project and that takes over in its place."
The book is now a project for readers. The pages disclose real life encounters with bears, near-death experiences in the wild where inches and seconds were the only slivers that separated life from the great beyond.
The book also talks a lot about horses, a lot about the organic environmental systems that urban humans might feel disconnected from but you get to know intimately if you embrace it, alone and at peace with your insignificance. That's where a common man found uncommon gifts of understanding and insight, and now some of those have been shared with the world.
When he's not still out on new adventures, Walchuk lives in the Robson Valley on the western side of the palatial Canadian Rockies. If Common Man, Uncommon Life isn't on the shelf of your favourite local bookstore it can be ordered by email (bchorse@telus.net) or phone (250-569-7575).
